


settle in, settle down

by Luridel



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Berath could you please Not, F/M, Pre-Relationship, Spoilers, a light dusting of mutual pining, for the start of Deadfire at least, the expected amount of trauma from Deadfire's opening
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-08 03:11:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14685230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luridel/pseuds/Luridel
Summary: Moriel never chose to be a captain, now, did she?The Watcher adjusts to her new circumstances.





	1. captain

The voyage to Neketaka is a long one, or perhaps it merely seems that way. Moriel feels estranged from her own body in a way she never has before. She is weaker, certainly, and spends a not-insignificant portion of the journey lying down in her quarters. Perhaps not proper captain behavior, but.

Well.

Moriel never chose to be a captain, now, did she? That was a choice Edér and her steward made for her. Her crew made it all the way into the Deadfire without a bit of input from their so-called captain, and they’re doing just fine now, too. Vela, of course, is absolutely enchanted with every bit of being at sea, and her vocabulary has expanded very quickly. At least her little girl is happy.

The Deadfire Archipelago is probably very lovely. It’s a nice, sunny day. Moriel spends much of it sitting in her bunk, dissociating heavily from the body she currently occupies. Her body. Her fingers don’t feel like her fingers any more. She’s developed a tremor in both hands, which concerns her deeply. Her hair has grown long and she can’t seem to braid it on her own right now. She feels utterly, devastatingly alone, which she knows is completely untrue. She has Vela, her daughter in all the ways that matter, she has Edér, her dear friend Edér, who’s been stuck playing nursemaid ever since Eothas—ever since—

Caed Nua. Caed Nua is _gone_.

It hurts. Gods, but it hurts, the one place she’d ever dared to call home, just gone, _gone_ —she parts her hair into three strands, that’s easy, but her hands keep shaking and the strands of hair won’t stay put in her grasp—her garden is gone, her _garden_ , the garden she and Vela planted together outside of Brighthollow. And now she has, she has…

The shiphunter Captain Furrante gifted to her, Serafen, the cipher—Vela took a shine to him immediately, and Moriel has a good feeling about him—he’s kept out of her mind since joining her crew. She thinks they’ll get along, once Moriel’s had a chance to get her bearings.

_Her garden is gone._

The young priestess, Xoti—Moriel has a good feeling about her too, although they’ve spoken relatively little thus far. Xoti is… Xoti is wild and full of life, and ordinarily that would be a good thing, but Moriel isn’t quite ready to deal with that just yet. Not so soon after waking up to this strange new world where she’s a captain and the Herald of Berath and Caed Nua is—

It hurts. Just thinking about it hurts.

And then there’s Aloth.

Aloth Corfiser, who _left_ , who disappeared for five years and never visited, not even once, even though she’d kept a guest room reserved for him in Brighthollow right up until—right up until Eothas—

Moriel curses in Ordhjóma as her traitorous hands fumble up her would-be braid again. She doesn’t think she’s particularly loud about it, but her blasted captain’s quarters don’t have a _door_ , and a moment later she hears a voice speak, tentative: “Is everything all right, Moriel?”

Aloth. Because of course it’s Aloth.

Perhaps it’s because he uses her name, which only Edér does these days, that causes Moriel to turn and face him. The expression of genuine concern on his face makes her want to shred her skin off. She’s still half-terrified he’ll disappear the moment they dock in Neketaka.

She’s waited too long to reply, because Aloth steps through the threshold of the archway and rephrases, “Are _you_ all right?”

“Yes,” Moriel says, too quickly, and then, “No. Yes. Yes—I’m fine.” She pushes her tangled black hair back over her shoulder; tries to avoid meeting Aloth’s eyes.

He looks… older. Strained. The same flawless posture, the same grimoire—she recognizes the binding; remembers dusting it off and handing it to him. He’s kept it, then, these five years. She can’t—she mustn’t read too much into that.

“Are you certain?” Aloth asks, because he’s too damned polite to tell her that she looks like a wreck.

The ship creaks and groans. Moriel swings her legs down off the bunk; rises to her feet in a manner that has nothing of her old grace. The world spins and tunnels out before her, everything goes dark around the edges, and Aloth goes from hesitating at the door to standing by her side in a moment. His hands are raised, ready to catch her should she fall. For a sliver of a moment, it seems to her an appealing option, but no—Moriel needs to keep whatever dignity she has left. She braces herself on the bunk behind her for balance as her vision clears. Aloth steps neatly backwards out of her personal space once the danger has passed, clasping his hands together in front of him.

“I’m still adjusting,” she admits, which feels like a heavy understatement. Moriel doesn’t dare ask if he plans on staying once they reach port. She casts around for a safer topic; settles on the first thing that comes to mind. “Is the crew of _The Defiant_ treating you all right?”

“Yes, of course, perfectly fine,” Aloth replies, and Moriel can sense another half of that sentence waiting in the wings.

“But?” she prompts after a moment.

“…but I do sometimes wish I had a little more privacy. I have been going over my notes, or trying to, and… it gets a little too loud to think, sometimes.”

“You’re welcome to—if you need the space,” Moriel says, gesturing at the empty table and chairs in her quarters. “You can still hear the upper deck, but it’s quieter, and you can draw the curtains… I won’t bother you when you’re working—unless there’s anything you think I can help with.”

“I would appreciate that,” he says with a flicker of a smile. “Very much. Thank you, Moriel.”

Smiling back, Moriel feels almost like proper folk again. “Anything you need, Aloth, just ask. Yes? It’s good to have you back.”


	2. harbor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some dialogue with the Harbormaster lifted directly from the game.

Vela wants to come and meet the queen, and so Moriel holds her little hand as they step off _The Defiant_ and onto Neketaka’s pier. The little orlan girl doesn’t seem to know which way to look first. The docks are quite loud. Edér crouches down next to Vela; pats his own shoulder. “You want a ride?” he asks. “See more that way.”

The child’s eyes light up, and she looks to Moriel, who’s already nodding permission. “Drop her in the ocean and I’ll kick you in myself,” she says teasingly, smiling at Edér. The moment she lets go of Vela’s hand, her fingers involuntarily clench and unclench.

“Aw, Watcher, I’m sure Edér’ll be real careful,” Xoti pipes in. 

The comment grates a little—as if Moriel would entrust her daughter’s wellbeing to somebody she didn’t have complete confidence in—but she lets it go. Xoti’s new, and she means well.

Vela hooks her legs around Edér’s neck and grips his ears. “Forward, walking chair!” she instructs him, giggling. Behind them, Moriel can hear Serafen laugh as well. Aloth remains a silent presence, but he hasn’t run off, which Moriel is grateful for.

They’ve barely made it thirty paces along the docks before they’re approached by an aumaua woman tailed by four bodyguards. She stares at them, and Moriel can only imagine what she might be thinking. They’re a mixed lot. Edér, Xoti, and Moriel are all folk, but then there’s Vela and Serafen, orlans who don’t look a bit alike, and Aloth, an elf who looks too well-dressed and put-together to be seen in public with the rest of their ragtag lot. Moriel misses her old stilettos. The new ones she has aren't nearly as nice.

“A Dyrwoodan ship?” The aumaua woman speaks up, after what feels like a bit too much time spent studying them and their vessel. “Hm. Hm. You are far from home, farmer,” she says, looking at Edér, who stands at the front of their little group with Vela still on his shoulders. “How did you make it all this way in your… little boat?”

“Why do we gotta be farmers, just ‘cause we’re from Dyrwood?” Edér asks. Vela grins. Moriel bites her tongue. Perhaps he’ll handle this.

“Are you a farmer?” the woman replies, hands on her hips.

“Yeah, but you can’t just _assume_. We got rabble-rousers, too.” That makes Vela laugh, and Edér laughs along with her.

If the woman appreciates the joke, she doesn’t let on. She looks past Edér, locking eyes with Moriel. Moriel forces herself to stand a little taller.

“I am the harbormaster, Kaoha,” she says. “I must ask your reason for docking in Neketaka.”

Moriel licks her lips; swallows back her nerves. “I’m following the adra colossus across the Deadfire,” she says. “I seek an audience with the queen.”

Kaoha laughs. It’s not a nice laugh. “And what makes you think the queen will want to see you?”

“I am Watcher Moriel, Lady of Caed Nua,” she begins. The world sways around her. Abruptly nauseous, she covers her mouth with one hand. The harbormaster is speaking, but Moriel can’t hear a word over the sound of blood rushing in her ears… and the chiming of a bell.

_Show. Them. What. You. Are._

The Pallid Knight’s voice and the sound of her chimes blocks out all other sound. The harbormaster is shaking her head; pointing back at _The Defiant_. Moriel blinks hard; sways on her feet; focuses. Tries to focus.

Cutting through the chimes, Serafen’s voice in her head: _Somethin’ the matter, cap?_

For a few blessed seconds, Moriel’s hearing returns—“back on your ship and head for open sea,” the harbormaster is saying—before it is once again drowned out by stifling silence and the chiming of Berath’s bells.

_I. Will. Help. You._

“No,” Moriel whispers. The pressure in her head increases. She can feel Serafen’s presence reaching out for her mind in concern and then withdrawing. It’s too much.

She falls to her knees, shutting her eyes, unable to think past the sound of the chimes. They ring twice, pause, twice, pause, twice, pause, matching her heartbeat. A heartbeat that slows down, the pauses between chimes getting longer and longer. The cobblestones dig into her knees. Moriel has never felt less in control of her body than this very moment. She is a vessel for Berath’s power, nothing more.

She blinks her eyes open; sees the harbormaster leaning over her, her mouth moving silently. She hears nothing but the chimes, further and further apart.

Her heartbeat slows.

And slows.

Slows.

_Now,_ says the Pallid Knight.

It feels like being cracked open. Moriel is a shell, a puppet; her head falls forward and she can _feel_ the souls gathering around her and her companions on the docks. She can feel—and then she can’t.

 

Few living things grow in the White that Wends. Moriel is not one of the glamfellen, the pale elves, but she lived with them for many years when she was young. Moriel remembers the pervasive chill, the colorless expanses of ice; remembers the joy of planting her first flower in Brighthollow’s garden. Vela, beside her, holding the trowel and laughing, face smudged with dirt. The plain, simple delight of it all, watching the sprouts poke through the soil.

Her garden. Home.

_Best be waking soon, cap,_ says Serafen in her mind. _Crew be getting’ mighty worried._

“—it safe to move her?” Edér is asking. “Xoti, you got any ideas?”

“I don’t rightly know for certain,” Xoti responds. “I ain’t never met any Watchers before.”

“Is Mama hurt?” Vela’s voice is quivery and close-by.

Then the smells return: sea-salt and ocean and fish and—

There are fingers in her hair, gentle. Aloth’s voice, also close: “I think she’s just exhausted, Vela.”

Vela again: “Should we pour water on her?”

“Nay, lass, she be wakin’ up right shortly now,” Serafen says.

Moriel forces her eyes open and looks directly up into Aloth’s concerned and upside-down face. Her head is in his lap, she realizes, and his hair hangs loose on one side. He freezes, caught.

“Had me worried there you’d gone into another coma,” Edér says, leaning over her and offering her a hand up. She takes it, using it to pull herself back to her feet. As Moriel does so, she realizes her hair has been neatly braided over one shoulder, the way she used to do it.

Moriel smiles her thanks to Edér and turns back around to Aloth, who has been seated on the sandy cobblestones for—she doesn’t know how long—and offers him a hand in turn. It appears he’s used one of the ties from his own hair to secure her braid. Aloth clears her throat and takes her hand, allowing her to pull him up. She lets go—or maybe he does—as Vela slams into her, wrapping both arms around Moriel’s legs.

“That was scary,” Vela says. “But you should’ve seen the look on that lady’s face.”

“Right close to pissin’ herself, she was,” Serafen chimes in, and Aloth shoots him a glare.

Moriel bends down again and gathers her daughter into a hug. “I’m fine now,” she says, trying very hard to sound like she means it. “That was just a Watcher thing.”

Edér and Aloth know better, she’s sure, but at least they keep quiet for now.


	3. paved with good intentions

They’ve gone barely thirty steps when Moriel recognizes familiar deep green feathers – an avian godlike. The last time Moriel saw Pallegina mes Rèi, there had been five golden suns across the front of her breastplate. Now the symbols are heavily scratched through, barely distinguishable. Moriel feels her heart sink. She had once advised Pallegina to stand true to what she thought was right, orders or no orders, and it seems that her advice has borne consequences.

This is definitely Pallegina, though, looking older and more tired but otherwise the same as Moriel remembers her, standing right in the middle of Neketaka’s streets, and years ago Moriel might have considered it fate, or a blessing. Now, she simply feels a sense of bone-deep relief: Pallegina is here. She will help.

“Hey, I know those feathers,” Edér is saying, just as Pallegina’s head turns towards them and her jaw drops.

“Wha-? Watcher?”

Moriel flinches.

“Pallegina!” Edér shouts, releasing Vela’s hand to wave heartily at her.

“ _Di verus_ … is it really you?” Pallegina sounds just as stunned as Moriel feels.

“It’s been ages!” Aloth exclaims, delighted. “But… what happened to your armor?”

“Aunt Pallegina?” asks Vela, all curiosity. She’s grown up hearing stories of Moriel’s old traveling companions, of course, but she was too young when they all left to remember them properly—except Edér, because he at least visited.

Pallegina’s expression transitions from shock to bitterness. “I’m sure that even at Caed Nua, you must have heard what happened when I returned to the Republics,” she says to Aloth, as if he’d been the one living at Caed Nua and not Moriel. Pallegina left before Aloth did; it’s not an unreasonable assumption. It still stings. The membranes flicker over her eyes in surprise as she notices Vela. “You’ve grown up, little one.”

Moriel finds her tongue, at last. “Pallegina,” she says, putting a hand on Vela’s shoulder and steering the girl closer. “I’m so glad to see you here… and I’m so sorry.”

“The Republics survived,” Pallegina says, looking away. “That’s the most important thing.”

“You deserved better from them,” Moriel cuts in, frowning.

“Here, at least, the Company’s business seems to be getting on without my interference.” Pallegina motions carelessly to the south, towards a large multi-storied building. Looking over, Moriel can see the flag of the Vailian Trading Company flapping in the breeze: gold on red, a set of scales and five stars beneath it.

“You’re not working for them now, are you?” Moriel asks, doubtful.

Pallegina laughs—a bitter, self-deprecating thing—and looks down. “No. No company associated with the ducs will employ me now. I get by working as a ship guard. At least I can be among my people, even if they look down on me.”

“No one should look down on you,” Moriel says, firmly. “You’ve always been the best of them. I could use your help again, if—if you’re between jobs. I’m hunting down Eothas—”

Pallegina is already shaking her head. “No,” she says, quietly but firmly. “I will not be coming with you, Watcher. I would be lucky if I wound up dead.”

Moriel flinches. Her free hand spasms and she tucks it quickly behind her back. “I—I just thought—”

“ _Corès_ , Watcher,” Pallegina says, and she nods, and then she’s gone.

“That was Aunt Pallegina?” Vela asks. “She’s not coming with us? I had so many questions to ask her!”

“No, Vela,” says Aloth’s voice, though it seems far away. “It seems that she isn’t.”

Serafen is there, then, patting her arm. “Steady does it, cap.” All at once, Neketaka slams back in: the sea breeze, salty and sharp, the brightly-colored awnings covering stalls by the docks, the distant sound of a dog barking. Moriel can’t—she can’t do this, she can’t be here right now. She can feel the others staring.

“You feelin’ all right?” asks Xoti.

Moriel shakes her head no. She can’t quite bring herself to speak, or she suspects she’ll start to cry.

Edér steps in. “Gotta say, that wasn’t how I’d expected that meeting to go,” he says, and then he hoists Vela up into the air again; settles the little orlan girl on his shoulders. “You need a minute?”

Moriel nods, helplessly grateful. She doesn’t know where she can go in Neketaka for a moment’s peace and quiet; she’s barely seen any of it but the docks thus far.

“Maybe we’ll just do a bit of shopping,” Edér says, motioning vaguely around the area. “C’mon.” He walks off, and Moriel can hear footsteps following him. “You see anythin’ you like, kid?”

“You’re too tall, Uncle Edér, lean down!” complains Vela.

Moriel flees past a fountain and down a set of steps, trying to get away from—from the worst of it. She has no idea where she’s going. She comes to a small pier, separate from the main docking area, currently boat-free.

She’d thought—she’d thought they were _friends_ , she really had. Now Moriel’s not sure what to think. She can count on Edér, she _knows_ that, and an hour ago she would have said the same for Pallegina. Now…

_I would be lucky if I wound up dead._

She’s standing on the edge of the pier, then, and her hands are shaking. Her whole body is shaking. It’s not—it’s not at all how she thought that conversation would go. Pallegina called her _Watcher_ , like they were strangers again, and—well, they might as well be, now.

She’s so lost in her own head that she doesn’t hear the man approaching until his shadow falls over her. Moriel spins, stilettos drawn in a heartbeat, and very nearly stabs Aloth, standing behind her with his hands raised defensively.

“Watch yerself,” says Aloth—says Iselmyr, says _Iselmyr_ , Iselmyr, the first Moriel’s heard from her in five years.

“Shit,” Moriel hisses, “Sorry, I thought—“

Aloth’s expression is pure Iselmyr, all fight-or-flight instinct, but in a moment it settles and she’s looking at her Aloth again. “You looked like you were going to jump,” he says, cautiously, like he doesn’t want to be giving her any terrible ideas. “The cipher—Serafen,” he corrects himself, “Serafen said you shouldn’t be alone.”

Moriel returns her stilettos to their sheaths and clasps her hands together, willing them to be still. “He’s probably right,” she mutters.

“I must admit, I didn’t think the Republics would be quite so harsh on her.” Aloth presses his fingers together and sighs. “You mustn’t blame yourself. It was her decision.”

“I advised her—“

“It was her decision, Moriel. You carry enough weight on your shoulders as is; there’s no need to add to that burden with things that aren’t actually your fault.” Aloth looks at her with a serious expression, right before a breeze smacks him in the face with his own hair, unsecured on the right side. He clears his throat. Moriel manages not to laugh.

“Do you want this back?” Moriel asks, tugging at the end of her braid.

“Ah—no, it’s fine.” Aloth removes the remaining hair tie from what remains of his usual hairstyle. He shakes his hair out and pulls it back into a low ponytail, glancing at Moriel for her input.

“You look so different,” she says quietly, “and also exactly the same.” She’s not talking about his hair. “You were gone for five years.”

“I—yes. It was a… difficult five years.”

Not for the first time, Moriel wishes she was one of the glamfellen, to have an elven sense of the passing of years. But no: she’s just common old meadow folk, and those five years felt like a small eternity—not even taking into account her daughter. Vela, as an orlan, ages faster than a child of Moriel’s blood might, and most of Vela’s ‘aunts and uncles’ have missed her formative years, Aloth included. She had hoped—but it doesn’t matter now.

“I can tell you about it,” Aloth says, “when you’re feeling better.”

“I’d like that.”

He puts a hand on her shoulder and steers her down from the pier, then leads her to the closest bench—this one outside a nearby building on the waterfront with a sign labeling it as the _Wild Mare_. Moriel sits, tipping her head back against the wall and closing her eyes.

It’s better to know. She needs to ask. “Are you going to leave too?”

“No,” Aloth replies, immediately; doesn’t even need a moment to consider it. “No, of course not. Your _soul_ is gone. Of course not.”

“Thank you.” It’s what she needed to hear, and she’s indescribably glad for it.


End file.
